Apr 05, 2024
Doors
- (25 hours)
Category: Fuselage
Over the past week have spent several days working on both the right and left door. The left door had a fairly good fit from the factory, so it was just methodically going through the steps and measuring things multiple times. To compress the door seal material, I put a strap around the front and back of the door around the fuselage and ratcheted it down (tight but not too tight). I then aligned the latch pins and adjusted until the door hooks made contact at the same time on front and back. I marked the top outline of the roller bushing with pencil against striker plate and began drilling through the bushing as a guide - ensuring it stayed centered on my mark. The left front latch hole drilled through the canopy was centered well on the channel, but I drilled the left back latch hole a little higher than I would have liked. It still works very well after all of the adjustments, but would have preferred it to be a little lower. Both of the left latch hooks capture the latch pin well and the door is tight. Unlike the instructions, I decided to reverse the direction of the latch pin through the canopy with the bolt head on the outside and used a castle nut on the inside - this was to limit the protrusion under the door seal material on the outside. The front latch hook impacted the door at the front before it opened fully, so had to notch out the fiberglass slightly so that it could open more fully.
The right door was very different in terms of fit. There was a significant twist in the door which made the bottom back kick out that you could almost stick your finger through. I did the same approach as before with strapping down the door around the fuselage to compress the door seal rubber to get the desired placement of the latch pin drill points. I pushed the plane out in the sun and covered the left canopy top, leaving the right side exposed for a few hours to get heat soaked. This allowed the slight reforming of the door to remove some of the twist to get the rear lower back gap to be cut almost in half. Once this was done, I could place the latch pin where the rear hook would really pull that part of the door downward. The right door worked out very well and closes with a good "clicking" sound as the latch pins hit the bottom of the curved seat on the hook.
For the front latches on both doors I used some washers with square centers to fit over the door handle bar stock. This got rid of the slop that existed because the square bar stock of the handle stuck out too far. These unique washers were found through the McMaster-Carr website, seems like they have everything.
I made some custom sized washers for the rear hook attachment bolts on both doors so that the back hook didn't bow out so much. The inner diameter of the washer fits over the small portion of the roller bushing that stuck out through the hook and contact the bolt head. In addition to using blue loctite, I added a locking washer to these bolts as well.
I ordered some longer P-clips for the middle of both doors so that the connector bar was not pulled down so much with the stock P-clips from the kit.
I started trimming the cover for the left door but need to finish that one and the right side one.
Tested both door locks with the keys and they work well.